Killing
Diplomacy — Dmitry Orlov
Dear
Readers: Dmitry Orlov provides the best explanation of the latest allegation
against Russia. His article is with his permission posted below.
The
British Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, confirms Orlov’s conclusion that UK
diplomacy has collapsed. The UK government has produced zero evidence for its
claim. Indeed, we do not even know if the alleged poisoning of a former British
spy even occurred. Yet Boris Johnson purports to know that Putin himself made
the “decision to direct the use of a nerve agent on the streets of the UK, on
the streets of Europe for the first time since the Second World War.”
How would Boris Johnson know this?
Killing
Diplomacy
Dmitry
Orlov
There
is the famous aphorism by Karl von Clausewitz: “War is the continuation of
politics by other means.” This may be true, in many cases, but it is rarely a
happy outcome. Not everybody likes politics, but when given a choice between
politics and war, most sane people will readily choose politics, which, even
when brimming with vitriol and riddled with corruption, normally remains
sublethal. In relations between countries, politics is known as diplomacy, and
it is a formal art that relies on a specific set of instruments to keep
countries out of war. These include maintaining channels of communication to
build trust and respect, exercises to seek common ground, and efforts to define
win-win scenarios to which all sides would eagerly agree, including instruments
for enforcing agreements.
Diplomacy
is a professional endeavor, much like medicine, engineering and law, and
requires a similarly high level of specialized education. Unlike these other
professions, the successful exercise of diplomacy demands much greater
attention to questions of demeanor: a diplomat must be affable, personable,
approachable, decorous, scrupulous, levelheaded… in a word, diplomatic. Of
course, in order to maintain good, healthy relations with a country, it is also
essential that a diplomat fluently speak its language, understand its culture
and know its history. Especially important is a very detailed knowledge of the
history of a country’s diplomatic relations with one’s own country, for the
sake of maintaining continuity, which in turn makes it possible to build on
what has been achieved previously. Complete knowledge of all treaties,
conventions and agreements previously entered into is, obviously, a must.
Sane
people will choose politics over war, and sane (that is, competently governed)
nations will choose diplomacy over belligerence and confrontation. An exception
is those nations that cannot hope to ever win the game of diplomacy due to an
acute shortage of competent diplomats. They are likely to strike out in
frustration, undermining the very international institutions that are designed
to keep them out of trouble. It then falls upon their more competent
counterparts in other nations to talk them off the ledge. This may not always
be possible, especially if the incompetents in question can’t be made to
appreciate the risks they are taking in blindly striking out against their
diplomatic counterparts.
If
we look around in search of such incompetently governed nations, two examples
readily present themselves:
It is
rather challenging to identify the last moment in history when the US had a
Secretary of State that was truly competent. To be safe, let’s set it as
January 20, 1977, the day Henry Kissinger stepped down from his post.
Since
then, US diplomatic history has been, to one extent or another, a history of
fantastic blunders. For example, as far back as 1990 US Ambassador to Iraq
April Glaspie told Saddam Hussein, “[W]e have no opinion on the Arab-Arab
conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait,” in effect giving the
green light to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and setting off the cascade of
events that has led to the current sad state of affairs in the region. Another
highlight was Hillary Clinton, whose only credentials had to do with a sort of
fake noblesse, stemming from her marriage to a former president, and who used
her position as Secretary of State to enrich herself using a variety of corrupt
schemes.
Among
the lower ranks of the diplomatic corps, most ambassadorships went to people
with no diplomatic education or experience, whose only qualifications had to do
with electoral fundraising on behalf of whoever happened to occupy the White
House and other partisan political considerations. Few of these people are able
to enter into a meaningful dialogue with their counterparts. Most are barely
able to read a programmatic statement of policy from a piece of paper handed
them by a staffer.
In
the meantime, the UK establishment has been gradually decrepitating in its own
inimitable post-imperial fashion. Its special relationship with the US has
meant that it had no reason to maintain an independent foreign policy, always
playing second fiddle to Washington. It has remained as a US-occupied territory
ever since World War II, just like Germany, and, deprived of its full measure
of sovereignty, could allow its international organs to slowly atrophy from
disuse. The benefit of this arrangement is that it has allowed the collapse of
the British Empire to proceed in slow motion—the slowest and longest collapse
in the long history of empires.
What
little competence there was left gradually drained away in the course of the
UK’s temporary dalliance with the European Union, due to end next year, during
which most of the rest of UK’s sovereignty was signed away by treaty, and most
questions of international governance were relinquished to unelected
bureaucrats in Brussels. And now, at the end of this long process of
degeneration and decay, we have in the person of the Foreign Minister a clown by
the name of Boris Johnson. His equally incompetent boss Theresa May recently
saw it fit to very loudly and publicly violate the terms of the Chemical
Weapons Convention to which the UK is a signatory.
To
recap, Theresa May claimed that a certain Russian-cum-British spy living in the
UK was killed using a nerve agent made in Russia, and gave Russia 24 hours to
explain this situation to her satisfaction. Russia is likewise a signatory to
the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), and had destroyed all 39,967 metric tons
of its chemical weapons by September 27, 2017. On that occasion, The
Director-General of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons
(OPCW), Ambassador Ahmet Üzümcü, stated: “The completion of the verified
destruction of Russia’s chemical weapons programme is a major milestone in the
achievement of the goals of the Chemical Weapons Convention. I congratulate
Russia and I commend all of their experts who were involved for their
professionalism and dedication.” The US is yet to destroy its stockpiles,
preferring to squander trillions on useless ballistic defense systems instead
of living up to its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention.
Here
is precisely what Theresa May did wrong. Under the terms of the CWC, the UK was
obligated to provide Russia with a sample of the nerve agent used, along with
all related evidence uncovered in the course of the investigation. After that,
the treaty gives Russia 10 days to respond. Instead, May provided no evidence,
and gave Russia 24 hours to respond. When Russia formally requested to see the
evidence, this request was refused. We can only guess at why she refused, but
one reasonable supposition is that there is no evidence, because:
•
May claimed that the nerve agent was Novichok, developed in the USSR. In order
to identify it, the UK experts had to have had a sample of it. Since neither
the USSR, nor Russia, have ever been known to export it, we should assume that
it was synthesized within the UK. The formula and the list of precursors are in
the public domain, published by the scientist who developed Novichok, who has
since moved to the US. Thus, British scientists working at Porton Down could
have synthesized it themselves. In any case, it is not possible to determine in
what country a given sample of the substance was synthesized, and the claim
that it came from Russia is not provable.
•
It was claimed that the victims—Mr. Skripal and his daugher—were poisoned with
Novichok while at a restaurant. Yet how could this have been done? The agent in
question is so powerful that a liter of it released into the atmosphere over
London would kill most of its population. Breaking a vial of it open over a
plate of food would kill the murderer along with everyone inside the
restaurant. Anything it touched would be stained yellow, and many of those in
the vicinity would have complained of a very unusual, acrid smell. Those
poisoned would be instantaneously paralyzed and dead within minutes, not
strolling over to a park bench where they were found. The entire town would
have been evacuated, and the restaurant would have to be encased in a concrete
sarcophagus by workers in space suits and destroyed with high heat. None of
this has happened.
•
In view of the above, it seems unlikely that any of what has been described in
the UK media and by May’s government has actually taken place. An alternative
assumption, and one we should be ready to fully test, is that all of this is a
work of fiction. No pictures of the two victims have been provided. One of
them—Skripal’s daughter—is a citizen of the Russian Federation, and yet the
British have refused to provide consular access to her. And now it has emerged
that the entire scenario, including the Novichok nerve gas, was cribbed from a
US/UK television drama “Strike Back.” If so, this was certainly efficient; why
invent when you can simply plagiarize.
•
This is only one (and not even the last) in a series of murders and assumed but
dubious suicides on former and current Russian nationals on UK soil that share
certain characteristics, such the use of exotic substances as the means, no
discernible motive, no credible investigation, and an immediate, concerted
effort to pin the blame on Russia. You would be on safe ground if you assumed
that anyone who pretends to know what exactly happened here is in fact lying.
As to what might motivate such lying—that’s a question for psychiatrists to
take up.
In
considering all of the above, healthy skepticism is called for. All we have so
far is an alleged double murder, no motive, doubtful means, over 140 million
suspects (anyone who’s Russian?), and public statements that amount to
political theater. As far as repercussions, there is very little that the UK
government can do to Russia. They kicked out a few dozen Russian diplomats (and
Russia will no doubt reciprocate); the Royal Family won’t be attempting the
World Cup in Russia this summer (not a great loss, to be sure); there are also
some vague threats that don’t amount to anything.
But
that’s not what’s important. For the sake of the whole world, (former) great
powers, especially nuclear ones, such as the US and the UK, should be governed
with a modicum of competence, and this show of incompetence is most worrying.
The destruction of public institutions in the US and the UK has been long in
the making and probably can’t be undone. But the least we can do is refuse to
accept at face value what appear to be blatant fabrications and provocations,
demand compliance with international law, and keep asking questions until we
obtain answers.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.